With the aim to highlight groundbreaking design approaches & ideas from global leaders and inspire creativity among stakeholders in design education and the profession, DJ Academy of Design (DJAD) is hosting a series of activities as part of the 1st International Design Week, taking place between 8th and 22nd of February.

Titled 'DJAD Designers Assemble 2025,' this event at the Academy is bringing together design aspirants, students, and industry professionals for in-depth discussions on design.

Thomas Garvey, President, World Design Organisation took part as the Chief Guest and inaugurated the DJAD Designers Assemble 2025 on Friday, along with Rattan Gangadhar, Dean, DJAD; Jasjit Singh, Professor at Ingvar Kamprad Design Center, School of Industrial Design, Lund University, Sweden; Michael Foley from Foley Designs Pvt Ltd., and Soundhar Rajhan, Chief Strategy Officer, LMW.

Experts like Mark Bond, Founder, Hem Tools; Magnus Feil, Senior Lecturer in Eco-Innovative Designs at FH Joanneum; Aleksandra Kot, Award-winning Designer and Samuel Rouse, an acclaimed Graphic Designer are the resource persons.

DJAD conveyed that special sessions by Global Design Experts will be held for college students from 8th to 14th of February; followed by workshops for Industry professional, college students pursuing design and school students aspiring to be designers on Feb 17th, an exclusive workshop for College students on Feb 18th and a design exhibition for school students from 19th to 22nd of February.

During the inauguration, Thomas Garvey, President, World Design Organisation explained about WDO & its programs including World Design Capital (WDC) and World Design Protopolis.

While WDC is a program that recognizes cities for their effective use of design to improve the overall quality of life for citizens, World Design Protopolis on the other hand is a longer-term project that empowers a selected city or community with the design knowledge and resources required to initiate targeted and transformational projects that improve civic quality of life.

India's Bengaluru has been selected for this 5 year mega project, and under it stakeholders will look at a hundred different ways to design the city in a better way and make life better for the citizens of Bengaluru.

Speaking further he said, there is a profound shift in the center of gravity of design potential in the world, based on demographics, technology and culture, to a greater emphasis on systems level thinking.

"Now is the time for India's rich design heritage, cultural diversity, and entrepreneurial foundations to be leveraged and scaled for greater positive global influence in collaboration with WDO- World Design Organisation's global network," he said.